MTC secures £1.85m facility for high-risk research activities
The Manufacturing Technology Centre in Coventry has secured £1.85 million from the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology’s Research and Innovation Organisations Infrastructure Fund to build a Hazardous Operations Cell (HazOps) to build and dismantle prototype battery modules and packs based on large format and high power/energy density cells.
The HazOps is a new facility designed to fill a significant UK gap in enabling high-risk R&D activities.
The facility incorporates advanced robotics, machine vision and laser systems to provide a flexible and remote manufacturing facility for research into hazardous manufacturing processes.
The facility provides a UK capability for prototyping battery module and pack designs based on cutting-edge, large format and high power/energy density cells (prismatic, large-format cylindrical).
The facility will be used for research into highly-automated battery disassembly for recovery of critical raw materials, key to securing a circular supply chain to support a UK battery industry.
HazOps is a UK designed and built live working facility to anchor battery manufacturing and the equipment supply chain in the UK. It complements the recent £12M investment into the UK battery materials scale-up facility with the advanced front-end, high-throughput automation required to commercialise battery recycling in the UK
The UK Battery Strategy, published last November, highlighted that battery technology underpins the transformation of the automotive sector, worth £70 billion annually and employing 166,000 in the UK. Emerging markets for battery energy storage systems, aerospace, rail and marine make batteries critical to both net-zero and national-security.
A UK battery industry could provide 100,000 high-quality, geographically diverse, jobs by 2035, says the government. Without a circular supply chain for critical raw materials this will be at risk from rising costs and materials shortages.
The facility allows innovation in rapid and safe, test, triage, and disassembly of batteries, required for a UK critical materials supply-chain with significant sustainability and resilience benefits. Manual disassembly is too slow and costly to be competitive in developed nations. Investment to date has focused on hydro/pyro-metallurgical processing of black-mass however without high-throughput automation the supply of black mass will be too costly and won’t keep pace with demand.
Materials traceability is key in batteries, with complex rules of origin and EU directives on quantities of recycled content. The MTC has developed a digital battery passport concept for material traceability and to deal with the variation in pack design. This battery passport relies on priority technology (AI) and will be further developed using within HazOps.
